FOSS Women

Party Fouday the 13th!

2010-03-10T04:11:13Z

Date:

03/09/2010 (All day)

As some of you may know Foulab have relocated from Ultramount to Saint Henry last December. We are now well established in our new Hacker Space. Join us for an afternoon of Workshops and an evening of revelry.

The events kick off at 3 pm with the following workshops:

Arduino 2: "I got the LED blink, now what?" with fx and xsmurf (frenglish). Learn how to connect other gadgets to the Arduino to expand its capabilities.
LegionLab's Basic Electronics! (frenglish) Prepare to understand everything.
Web Security Snacks with gus and dataworm (frenglish). You're a web developer and you are worried about your application safety? gus and

dataworm will introduce you to web security basics.

My dad and I occasionally find common ground.

2010-03-10T04:10:14Z

We're both dealing with different churches that have cold people who crank up the thermostat every time they come in the door, triggering the emergency heat strips and sending the electric bill skyrocketing.

I asked if he could get us some lockable covers for our thermostats. His response? "We tried that. They pried them off."

He then told me his solution, which made me giggle: installed new, programmed thermostats just inside the air return ducts, where no one would see them, and didn't tell anyone that the old thermostats didn't control the heat any more. Everyone was happy.

I don't think we could get away with that at our church, but I have to admire the BOFH-ness of it.

What happened to Hamilton

2010-03-10T02:38:56Z

This is not the Hamilton i remember growing up in:
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/6913352/hit-and-run-robbery-vic...

Passing motorists ignored a hit-and-run robbery victim left lying on the side of a Hamilton road last night, police say.

The 21-year-old man was walking home across Anglesea Street about 11pm when he was hit by a vehicle, near the Caro Street intersection.

The vehicle's occupants, believed to be two men and a woman, demanded the victim's wallet and took his backpack which had been thrown a short distance by the impact of the car.

In fact i'm hoping the victim has left something out of his account to explain this. I'm gonna be watching for more details.

The area was busier than usual as people made their way home from the international cricket match at Seddon Park, and police hoped someone may recall seeing the incident take place.

I've seen someone fall off pushbikes in central Wellington and be inundated in people trying to help. Hamilton isn't that much different to Wellington.

p.s does Cricket really run as late as 11pm?

and now a baby photo:

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Deadline in 7 days: Grace Hopper 2010 Call for Participation

2010-03-10T02:38:30Z

Proposals due by March 16!

March meeting

2010-03-10T02:38:28Z

Next Thursday, for our regularly scheduled meeting, we will be having a 9.0 alpha testing party!

When: 7 pm, Thursday, March 19, 2010
Where: FreeGeek
Who: YOU!

If you want to test it on your own machine, please download it ahead of time:

http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/9.0alpha4/

If you want to work on one of the P4 Lab machines, contact Mark so he can get an account set up for you.

Read:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/HowToBetaTest
http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/release-9-0.html

You don't need a laptop to participate - we can do pair-agile-eXtreme testing!

Afterwards, as usual, we will have beer/crash the PDX.pm Hackathon at the Lucky Lab.

Making those Fn- laptop keys do something useful

2010-03-10T01:06:32Z

A friend was trying to get some of her laptop's function keys working under Ubuntu, and that reminded me that I'd been meaning to do the same on my Vaio TX 650P.

My brightness keys worked automagically -- I suspected via the scripts in /etc/acpi -- and that was helpful in tracking down the rest of the information I needed. But it still took a bit of fiddling since (surprise!) how this stuff works isn't documented.

Here's the procedure I found.

First, use acpi_listen to find out what events are generated by the key you care about. Not all keys generate ACPI events. I haven't get figured out what controls this -- possibly the kernel. When you type the key, you're looking for something like this:

sony/hotkey SPIC 00000001 00000012

You may get separate events for key down and key up. It's your choice as to which one matters.

Once you know the code for your key, it's time to make it do something. Create a new file in /etc/acpi/events -- I called mine sony-lcd-btn. It doesn't matter what you call it -- acpid will read all of them. (Yes, that means every time you start up it's reading all those toshiba and asus files even if you have a Lenovo or Sony. Looks like a nice place to shave off a little boot time.)

The file is very simple and should look something like this:

# /etc/acpi/events/sony-lcd-btn

event=sony/hotkey SPIC 00000001 00000012
action=/etc/acpi/sonylcd.sh

Now create a script for the action you specified in the event file. I created a script /etc/acpi/sonylcd.sh that looks like this:

#! /bin/bash
# temporary, for testing:
echo "LCD button!" >/dev/console

Now restart acpid: service acpid restart if you're on karmic, or /etc/init.d/acpid restart on earlier releases. Press the button. If you're running from the console (or using a tool like xconsole), and you got all the codes right, you should be able to see the echo from your script.

Now you can do anything you want. For instance, when I press the LCD button I generally want to run this:

xrandr --output VGA --mode 1024x768

Or to make it toggle, I could write a slightly smarter script using xrandr --query to find out the current mode and behave accordingly. I'll probably do that at some point when I have a projector handy.

Addressing tokenism

2010-03-10T01:06:07Z

This question came from the Ask a Geek Feminist post, which is still taking your questions.

How do you determine if a person has been invited to participate (conference speaker, lead a workshop, blog, etc.) as a token of diversity rather than on their merits?

And, if it is tokenism, what would you do?

I’m going to talk about being a token woman in this post, because that’s what I feel familiar with, hopefully commenters can share their thoughts on being a token representative of other (or multiple) groups.

First, a wee bit of 101. The response to this kind of discussion is sometimes: “Wait, you want more women. But we shouldn’t be selecting women just because they’re women. Feminism is hard, eleventy one 1!11!!1 I quit!”

Yeah, feminism is hard. That’s why we’re still here and frankly expect to be for a long time. Yes, we’d advocate that you have women taking prominent roles in your geekdom in similar proportions to their participation. And this may be a hard thing to do: much harder than having a criteria for a single event that says “at least three women speakers, please, this year for sure.” Likewise for diversity in general. You do this the hard way: organically. You should be striving for diversity everywhere, not just in venues where people are likely to notice and criticise your lack of diversity. You shouldn’t be having to select a woman speaker just because she’s a woman: if there are women in your geekdom at all, there should be women in your candidate pool and then you select some of them as part of your usual process.

Of course, that means keeping in mind that it’s harder to select women even when you have access to women candidates, because essentially everyone (so, me, you) has a set of biases about women that influence how we see individual women. Try and consciously correct for these biases. As an example: she seems inexperienced as an speaker. But on the other hand, we regularly select men on no more evidence than the fact that they asked, don’t we? Are we applying the same standards to women?

As regards bias, once you have your selection pool, at the time of selection, there are various approaches. Blinding the selection process is very effective: if you can hide names, appearances, and everything else that you can aside from the person’s proposal or skill is something of the gold standard approach. This is famously true for orchestral auditions. Otherwise, all you can do is try and be very conscious about your choices and remember that you have inherited biases towards privileged groups, and towards people like yourself, from your surroundings.

On to the question itself: someone appears to be a token women. What to do about it?

This is complicated precisely because tokenism isn’t a binary thing, token or not-a-token. When in a sufficient numerical minority particularly, as women are in a lot of geekdoms, I think it’s unlikely that no attention at all was paid to a woman’s gender and its effect on gender balance and diversity when she was selected for a role. It might have come up explicitly in the selection, it might have occurred to individuals privately, it might have influenced them subconsciously, but to some extent she was likely chosen as partly “the person who can best do this task” and partly as “a woman”.

I think there are some indicative but not definitive signs of problematic tokenisation. They include:

being the only woman selected among many men;
being part of a repeating pattern in which a single woman or the same number of women are selected time after time (eg, a few too many tech conferences currently seem to have a pattern of having exactly one woman selected to give one of the keynotes year after year); and
being selected to represent the female side of however the local gender binary fractal divides the space, especially where this is a repeated pattern.

The question doesn’t specify about what to do if you think you yourself are a token, or if you think someone else is. I’ll answer the easier part first: if you think someone else is.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to point this out with respect to an individual woman. Tokenism is a double-bind: tokenism should be challenged, but ‘token’ is a very damaging and hurtful label to apply to someone and this is regularly used as a weapon against women. Calling someone a token woman is a good way of dismissing her and giving other people ammunition to dismiss both her and other women who are in a numerical minority. (Much love to my first year computer science tutor who greeted my appearance in his tutorial with: “ah, of course, our token woman!”)

It’s pretty rare for a woman to be explicitly identified as a token by the people who selected her as one, in these situations where diversity is being genuinely sought. (In the case where people feel diversity is being forced upon them, they often take it out on the tokenised person.) Generally they realise that “we selected Mary to be our woman speaker this year, that’s an infinite improvement on last year” is an admission that their approach to diversity is fairly shallow.

So you don’t often know for sure, and speculating on an individual woman’s selection as a token is a problem in and of itself. Instead, the system needs to be redesigned at a lower level. This is very much a place in which allies in positions of power need to do work. Work hard on having access to diversity through your networks. The idea is that when someone is seeking a speaker, writer, teacher, leader or so on, it shouldn’t be only men’s names that spring to mind. This is the long hard way. Essentially what you need to do is make your diversity efforts an ongoing, continual process. Claire Light wrote about doing this as a fulltime job in Editorial Work Is HARD, Asshole!. Allowing for the number of hours you have available, this is how you should be approaching your geek network when you have power over other people’s prominence. You should be seeking to tunnel for hidden gold all the time, not just keeping to the same old (male, etc) names. It shouldn’t just be your events that are diverse, it should be your personal network. Also have a look at Skud’s ten tips for getting more women speakers and think about analogies in all situations where you are choosing to make someone prominent.

If you do the above, you won’t be stuck at the last minute trying to make sure you have one single woman to desperately avoid looking undiverse.

What if you think you yourself are a token? I don’t think that you have an obligation to challenge what’s going on: requiring that women who’ve been put in a difficult spot do all the work of changing assumptions and practices is a bad approach. We all should, and the more powerful should be addressing their own privileges in proportion to their power. You might decide that the best thing to do is keep your head down this time.

But let’s say that in this instance, you want to challenge the tokenism of your selection. There are a bunch of options:

refuse with a reason. Say that you believe you’re only being included in order to have a woman speaker or prize recipient or whatever. Probably this is only going to happen when you have been somehow informed that you’ve been selected explicitly and only as a token, not in the far more common case where you aren’t sure or you’re partly a token.
if you’re been included in a way that is below your capabilities: you could either point this out and refuse, or demand a role commensurate with your status and abilities. For example, if you believe your expertise and speaking skills merit keynote slots, ask for them when being offered normal speaking slots.
if you feel your offer has been too feminised, ask to change it. For example: “I haven’t done game artwork for the last few years, I’m much more familiar with game design state-of-the-art. I would rather run a workshop on that and I notice that there isn’t one in the program.”
use your prominence to promote other women, or other people who you believe aren’t getting enough exposure. Invite them to your workshop, suggest them as alternative speakers, suggest that a journalist speak to them instead, and so on.
try and leverage your token slot into a role with power. Ask to be on the organising or selection committee next year. Then you can try and make a more organic approach to diversity right from the start.

If you’re worried you’re a token, it’s also worth keeping in mind that women are trained to underestimate their own worth and significance. Don’t neglect to consider the possibility that your work is just as good as or quite likely better than the required level for the role you’ve been offered. You also do not need to be The Universe’s Single Leading Expert on anything in order to publicly opine, teach or lead it. The fact that you can think of someone who would be better does not mean that you are not suitable. Tokenism exists, but it does not mean that everything you are offered is unearned or depriving someone more worthy.

For commenters: have you been tokenised? Were you able to tell for sure? Did you decide to do anything about it, and if so, what? Have you any experience of the explicit and deliberate tokenisation of someone else?

And again, this post focused on women being tokenised, but have you been included as a token member of another group, or at the intersection of more than one? Do you have any thoughts specific to that?

Michael Geist to keynote PublicACTA

2010-03-09T23:34:53Z

Michael Geist is coming to town..

allow me have a little fangirl moment

:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

Here's the press release:

Michael Geist to keynote PublicACTA - InternetNZ

Media Release - 10 March 2010 - InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) is excited to announce that renowned Canadian law professor Michael Geist, a world authority on technology law issues, will be the keynote speaker at the PublicACTA event, being held in Wellington on 10 April 2010.

"We are delighted that Professor Geist is able to make it to New Zealand to contribute to the debate around the ACTA negotiations," says InternetNZ Policy Director Jordan Carter.

PublicACTA is being held the weekend before the next round of ACTA negotiations in Wellington, 12-16 April 2010.

ACTA is a plurilateral trade agreement being negotiated by the USA, EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries, aimed at increasing the control that intellectual property owners have over their products and ideas, and at reducing incidents of counterfeiting and illegal trade in goods. The negotiation phase of the treaty is intended to be finished in 2010.

Professor Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada, has written widely on the challenges of copyright and digital technology.

"His in-depth understanding of the ACTA process to date, and well publicised positions in favour of citizen access to the negotiation process, will add quality analysis and profile to the event," says Carter.

"PublicACTA will be aimed at creating a constructive contribution to the negotiations being held in Wellington. Professor Geist's participation will contribute to that goal," says Carter.

Professor Geist is looking forward to participating in the event:

“New Zealand has emerged as a leading global voice on ACTA and I'm delighted to have the chance to participate in this important event.

“Many people around the world have watched with admiration at how thousands of New Zealanders have actively engaged in domestic and international copyright reform initiatives, promoting a balanced approach that meets the needs of all stakeholders,” he says.

Further information about Michael Geist is available at his website, which can be found at www.michaelgeist.ca.

People who are interested in attending the PublicACTA event should register their interest by sending an email to rsvp@internetnz.net.nz.

Further details about the Conference will be released on a dedicated website next week.

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Now Serving Fresh Kernels: Linux.com Store Launches

2010-03-09T23:34:29Z

Shop online, or submit your design.

gesellschaft

2010-03-09T23:34:24Z

At the recently concluded pycon2010 at Atlanta, there were some discussions about diversity, women etc... I suppose, much of my energy would have been saved if I had published this mail earlier or even blogged about some individual sexist behaviors. Nah, its not fear, rather I try to avoid talking about evil creepy stuff on my blog but during various discussions realised that many folks dont know what you experience on an individual level in the floss community, unless you talk about it. That is the first step.

Hi $PersonsName,

As i write this mail the words "Out the creeps publicly" uttered by a devel (who shall go nameless) comes to my mind and hence i'd prefer to not be anon and back my words under the pseudonym 'svaksha'. $PersonsName, do feel free to suitably trim my long train of thoughts and I wont be offended if it does'nt make it to your article as /self is too late in all probability -- my mental resources are wound up around a lexical parser atm.

Initially when i used to hear all the women speak about their experiences i took comfort in the fact that i am not alone in hoping for change. But i had not factored in the possibility that change is tougher when "clueless new idiots" follow in the steps of "sexist old timers". Over the years the attitudes towards diversity still remains sexist, especially within the Indian community where cronyism is normal.

My observations are largely India-centric salted with some experiences on international lists and sans a timeline ...

The usual personal mails asking for personal details under the guise of "i want to volunteer" or guised as a personal interview (since when did marital status become relevant to floss contribution?). Another peculiar one was a guy writing emails in different scripts despite my requests that i didnt understand them. It was when i requested a friend to translate them that i realised why -- personal questions in a non-english script meant fewer people would know he was asking personal questions.

Then there was this instance of a jerk trying to crack into my server when he became aware of my gender. I was happy with the anonymity --- Very very few folks (i trusted) knew my location and real name but that changed when I founded the Ubuntu-Women project, was termed a "militant feminist" (a pejorative term for Feminazi). This pejorative was echoed in the Indichix (LC-India) mailing lists in 2008 to avoid answering the question of 'controlling a woman's group by proxy' - cronyism and elitism is gender-neutral The personal attacks descended into personal life queries (hint:: the coffee, splenda thread) by one Indian male who subscribed to grrls-only mailing list by pretending to be a woman. Gah, so much for the "cultural_Indian" !!

Other experiences include an smtp header spoof of my mail id to send a sex-related email ; an indian devel in his interview wanted to be stuck in a lift with me even while he admits to never having met me. Another was the death threats from "mikeeeeusa" on DW which went off-list ~~ IIRC around 5 women were the initial targets but Clytie (an AU contributor) had threats sent to her teenage daughter too.

http://eaves.ca/2009/07/06/structurelessness-feminism-and-open/ has a point I could relate to viz.elites and cronyism -- both of which are true as far as the local Indian floss community is concerned. I've heard past incidents of getting cronies to use social engineering (a bully's crony will pretend to be your friend and find out where you work, etc..) and use pressure tactics (complaining to your superiors/boss@work --the easiest way to bully an individual who fears losing his/her livelihood) to silence disagreeing voices -- This may probably not be sexist as it happened to an indian male (who shall remain anonymous) floss volunteer, but i'm writing this to highlight a deeper and more serious problem within the fragmented Indian floss community.

Pretending to support women racks up the positive Publicity Karma (hence commercially lucrative) while one can continue to be being elitist and deny decision making power via "cronyism" (the elites will use red herrings and out-shout the newbies who disagree under the cries of "show me the code") on the side. A very subtle game that is hard to decipher on a superficial level.

However, when subtle aggressiveness is reserved for the local community members only very few folks outside that circle are aware of it. This small subset of highly aggressive Indian men will never exhibit this negative attitude on the international project lists and irc channels where they do participate, because it will permanently damage their reputation which is never good for business or landing a job in future. Also, international lists/irc/etc... have lesser bystanders[0] taking care of SEP[1].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem]

If readers are thinking its a malaise with the whole Indian community or a cultural baggage --its not. There is a lot of positive stuff happening thanks to many individuals who are polite and respectful and dont feel threatened by (wo)men. There are many men and women who continue their good work on an individual basis but unfortunately they are relegated to the back-burner by pompous self-promoting jerks. I'm personally hoping to see a truly open community initiative like LCA or debconf (and others like it) happen in India.

Regarding including links and threads, i am undecided -- the marketing gimmick "bad publicity is still free publicity" is another reason why I prefer to avoid blogging too much about negative behavior as it can acquire a cult-like halo and an easy way to fame for other men or newbies, especially when they see peers getting away with it. While technical (like a ddos attack,...) misdemeanors are punished quickly i've not yet heard an a$$hat being ostracized or boycotted from the community and this despite there being discussion and more discussion and protests about the said negative behavior.

Besides, the online world is so small that there is the danger of forming a mental picture of an individual and getting over-familiar via blogs, twitter, irc, lists, etc... Its possible that judging folks during real life meetings based on these preconceived assumptions is another cause of social behaviour problems.

I dont have any magic answers and have always believed that community action is the best way to solve the problem. Yet, getting women to speak-up openly against the negative attitude is a lot harder, especially when they feel they will not get any support as the lone voice, statistically speaking. Few folks will want to waste their time tackling a regular barrage of red-herrings and logical fallacies. Ex. using the term "we" is (sometimes purposefully) misunderstood as taking over control and using "I" is interpreted as "the problem is singular in nature" and _one_ person is statistically too small to figure in change -- hence the status quo remains. This tactic works very well in situations when no change is desired.

Y'all probably are aware of all this so i'll stop as i've got to leave now.

ciao,
-vid

As you've probably guessed, the above was my mail sent to an unarchived women's list. I'm also reproducing (with permission) an exchange with another floss contributors who wrote after he read the above e-mail:

Devel: And you cant have a community of human beings and donkeys right? That's why I refuse to believe most of the Indian FLOSS communities are communities at all. I dont care and I dont bother.

Me: That is the scary bit...everybody stops caring. When I stop caring its just downhill then. Somewhere we have to make an effort to build the community, sustain it and grow.

Devel: You have to make sure the community is worth it.

Wow, that last line really hit me hard and brought me to my senses. This thought was echoed ("dont beat your head against a wall, it will bleed" are words that I cannot forget)

Do some people behave differently in public and in private? In my (Indian) experience, YES. Pretense is an individual's negative attitude and India is not exactly famous for the way it treats its women-folk. That these negative social attitudes magnify themselves on the internet is not at all surprising because evils minds will learn to use tools like tor and fake email id's/online profiles to stalk women online because they dont have the courage to do it in the open with their real identity and the ensuing repercussions.

One should not expect women to say *Stop harassing/stalking*. Given the low female participation, women are an even smaller number in the existing scheme of things and the lack of space to speak up within projects is another crucial point that gets overlooked. Instead of telling women how to adjust to sexist bullying, men within a project must learn to speak up if they wish to see change. Most times that action is taken against those who manage to offend those in power, else in floss communities sometimes one can get away with any negative behaviour with zero repercussions.

In my years within most Libre software projects, the common thread that surfaces is the expectation that "change is slow" because positive results with respect to reducing sexist behaviour takes time. I disagree. Is it that women have to be offended with negative attitudes or sexism for action to be taken? Why cant a lone individual (irrespective of gender, nationality or any other criteria) say "stop being a jerk" and get tons of community support. If there is a lack of community support, its due to apathy and a lack of firmness and strong action with low tolerance to negative behaviour by every person involved in the floss community.

This is not easy as easy as typing this blog entry was, since it needs impartial and strong leadership qualities. We need an attitudinal change on an individual level if we dont want a gesellschaft instead of a community where people care for others. FLOSS Communities are still made up of individual people who use the same technology they create. Women (add foo-group of choice) should not be the diversity tokenism for spin doctors trying to prevent a PR disaster.

Some Fanvids I Like

2010-03-09T22:02:39Z

I was just telling a pal about Archive Of Our Own, and then I was explaining why an episode of Psych mentioning "Shassie" was fanservice [0]. And Kirrily just linked to a feminist fanvid sampler. So I decided I should publicly bookmark some of my favorite fan fiction and fanvids.

First a few vids:

"It Depends on What You Pay" by giandujakiss, the classic Dollhouse vid.
And speaking of critiquing the source text, "...on the dance floor" by Sloane, which permanently changes how one watches the Star Trek reboot (and Flight of the Conchords).
Did I mention critiquing the source text? "Handlebars" by Flummery.
"Us" by lim, which makes my heart soar every time I watch it. Amazing notes.
A fun James Bond vid by giandujakiss that has a great hit-hit-hit-bwah? repeating sequence in the middle.
And the vid that I was just telling Elisa about: "Hourglass" by giandujakiss, which just seems fun until you read the creator's brilliant notes & metacommentary.

Fics later.

[0] "The Head, The Tail, The Whole Damn Episode" also featured a Leverage shoutout and guest appearances from Jeri Ryan (late of Star Trek: Voyager and Leverage) and Michael Hogan (Colonel Saul Tigh on Battlestar Galactica). Much as when I heard Obama had put Tufte on a panel, I'm feeling all pandered to.

Revisions continue but LaTeX is slow, so have a dogsplosion!

2010-03-09T17:26:31Z

Revisions continue apace. Often, I think that using LaTeX is a bad idea because the compiles are long enough that I lose my train of thought by the time they're done. I am trying not to think about ways to solve this problem on account of that being really distracting. Instead, I am web surfing.

This is the most awesome thing I found yesterday:

see more dog and puppy pictures

A quick web search (for "mop dog") discovered that it is a Hungarian Puli Sheep Dog, in case you wanted to know.

And the winners are…

2010-03-09T15:54:16Z

Whilst I was quite happily sleeping yesterday morning, the International Women’s Day competition winners were announced. The popular vote prize went to Elvira Martinez “tatica1″. The second prize went to Karen Y. Perez, and Jen Phillips got an honourable mention for her awesome analogy-style story.

You can read all the stories and see the record of votes on the Ubuntu Women wiki.

Thanks so much to everyone who entered and voted (and Jono for announcing). The competition was heaps of fun to organise and now we have lots of stories to show that we forge our own paths to Ubuntu just like the guys do!

Thoughts on International Women’s Day

2010-03-09T08:14:04Z

It’s 11:18pm in my timezone as I write this and I’m reflecting on International Women’s Day. I feel kind of anxious and twitchy and unhappy, and I’m trying to unpick why.

This morning one of the first things that greeted me, as I sat in bed skimming my Dreamwidth reading page, was this video of Ethyl Smyth’s March of the Women, illustrated with pictures of women suffragists who fought for votes — and a wide range of human rights — for women.

Next year marks 100 years since the composition of that song. These are women of my great-grandmother’s generation marching, fighting, protesting, being arrested, and being imprisoned for basic human rights. I should be inspired, and yet I feel frustrated and exhausted.

How is it that we are still dealing with this shit?

(And because I am cranky, I am going to set an arbitrary rule on comments: if you post a comment with “but here’s an awesome feminist thing to be happy about!” you must also post a “but this fucking sucks” link as well. And vice versa.)

Wrapping up the weekend

2010-03-09T06:42:50Z

Sunday: bit of breakfast at home, then picked up the guys from the Babson hotel (which has free jellybeans) and ran through the supermarket grabbing hot pot ingredients (and shrimp chips), followed by (what else?) hot pot at the house after a chopping-vegetables-to-swing-music fest. I am not a particularly good teacher of chopstick usage; Greg is a better one. He and Lynne May ended up talking about literacy remediation while Sebastian taught Melanie how to fix the broken Record activity and I served as furniture for Audrey, who was rather insistent about sitting on my lap. Sugar Labs was discussed, guitar and piano played.

Then we did a Newbury Comics (Sebastian) and New England Mobile Book Fair (me) trip followed by an airport drop-off (Greg, who looked pretty tired by this point). I’d been waiting to get both Greg and Sebastian to Olin for some time now, so having them both around for the same weekend was nothing short of wonderful. This left a lazy Sunday afternoon/evening to stash the car at Kendall, walk down Mass Ave (popping out for coffee and dinner along the way, and just missing blues at Johnny D’s) and take the T from Davis back to Kendall.

I showed off my three favorite Boston skylines (Longfellow Bridge, East Boston Piers Park, and Mass Ave) and we made it back to the house just in time to watch the Academy Awards. (Which, I hadn’t realized before, was the first time Sebastian had gotten to see them despite being a film geek – they always air too late for German time. Actually, I hadn’t realized it was the night of the awards until we got back to the house and the TV was on. In the meantime, I served as the ~~victim~~ subject of Melanie’s photography assignment, which was a portrait; we arranged most of the available laptops in the house on the floor in a semicircle, and I proceeded to use them all simultaneously (fun, but uncomfortable when you’re lying on your stomach on a wooden floor; would much prefer a table). Eventually the photographs changed from “Mel using the computers” to “Mel falling asleep on the floor in front of the computers” and I grabbed a glass of water and went to bed.

For about three hours. I was basically unable to sleep last night, waking up every 30-60 minutes to stare at the ceiling starting at 3am until I finally gave up just before 6am and decided to work for a bit. This mostly involved crawling (at agonizingly slow speed) through my email backlog from the weekend, since I’d last really checked email on Friday morning – I was far from my most efficient, and I didn’t cleanly finish any of the other stuff I was supposed to do. Sigh. Had about half the day to get stuff done (I’ve got my OSDC article outlined in slide form, just not turned into prose) before Sebastian and I both had to lug our bags out to the train, then the airport, then part ways, whereupon my plane sat stuck upon the tarmac for an extended delay during which I decided I was incapable of being productive and would read about tourist attractions in Austin, TX instead.

Finally ended up at La Casa de Tesch close to 1am – Matt and Bonnie are being kind enough to host me during CSEET. Whacking this post out so I don’t forget, and so I can clear my mind and actually, y’know, do work tomorrow morning before the 8am conference start.

Up In The Air is a good movie. Very, very good movie.

Bedtime now. I hope I’ll actually be able to remain unconscious tonight.

Another Design Hub mockup

2010-03-09T06:42:11Z

I worked on another mockup for the mockup collaboration tool I blogged about a while back – Josh from Isotope11 coined the name ‘Design Hub’ and I like it, so that’s what I’m calling it now.

I put this together for Robby from Isotope11, who has been rocking out on implementing a prototype of the application. (I saw a preliminary prototype last week and was really impressed with the progress! I’m hoping to carve out some time to CSS-ify it soon.) Josh has been doing a great job making sure the project keeps moving forward also, so I’m pretty pumped. (I have the usual post-hackfest ’shiny-ponies-flying-in-the-air-oh-I-want-them-all’ distractability lately so Josh’s patience & focus has been very helpful.)

Here’s the other screens that need to be mocked up:

~~Mockup #1: the first mockup, the details page for a single proposal~~
Mockup #2: The same as the project details mockup shown here, but in the mode where the project has been finished and the proposal that ended up getting used is highlighted.
Mockup #3: A listing of all the projects going on right now. Maybe link to an archive of old ones. Each project should have a little preview of the activity going on ‘new proposal posted yesterday by jambalaya joe’ etc. Deadlines and status should be shown too.
Mockup #4: submit a new proposal page
Mockup #5: submit new project page

The Isotope11 folks I think need mockups quicker than I am going to be able to produce them. If you’ve any ideas or inclination to sketch out mockups for any of the above (or if you have ideas for other screens or want to revise the suggestions here) please have at it. The latest inkscape source SVGZ that includes the source for both the first mockup – the proposal details page and this latest mockup is available here:

Mockups Source SVGZ

I know at least four of you (hi pcon, Arkanis, Yannik, and Colin Z.! ) besides the folks at Isotope11 have expressed interest in helping out on the implementation of this project. I believe there is or will be a public git repo for it – the project is open source but we haven't really talked too much about sharing the code yet, I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, please drop a comment to let me know what you think about this latest mockup.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Quick Poll: What would you like to see from the book?

2010-03-08T21:31:13Z

I have permission to include a few pages from the Definitive Guide to PC-BSD in the next issue of BSD Mag and could use some help determining what to submit.

Trusting the Voting Machines

2010-03-08T21:30:16Z

Hundreds of millions of people rely on the accuracy of voting machines and the polling process to form our government. New voting machines are being developed, moving from paper-based ballots to electronic voting.

How accurate are those digital voting machines? How unbiased? Do they count every vote? Do they count every vote accurately and completely? How do they work? How tamper-proof are they? Is there a way to audit results? How good is the audit process? How would we know?

Right now it’s hard to tell. It turns out that how digital voting machines work is a secret. Voters are not allowed to know, to see or to test those machines or how they work. (I’ll speak of California here, as a result of talking to the California Secretary of State, but this is only an example of the problem.) We’re asked to “trust.”

The OSDV Foundation exists to change this. OSDV is a non-profit organization building open source voting machinery. This is important for several reasons:

This allows voters to verify what our voting machines are doing. Like other open source projects, those of us with enough technical expertise can serve as consumer advocates and validate that our voting machines operate as they should.
In voting, 1 or 2 percent is a giant amount. Many elections — at least in the US where I’m most familiar — are very, very close. A 1% to 2% margin of error may be acceptable in many business settings, but it is not acceptable in a critical election where it can change results. With open source products we can see and test and improve the quality, rather than simply trust that all is well.
Casting and counting votes should not be a for-profit enterprise; it is the foundation of elected governments.
Proprietary ownership of the means of voting IS a conflict of interest. According to the OSDV Foundation, right now something like 88% of the US voting infrastructure is owned by two companies, which will soon be one company.
Good open source alternatives are likely to cause an improvement in the quality of the dominant (close to 90% market share) product offering.

OSDV is just reaching the point where its first products are just about ready for use. Having a viable alternative in the market is critical. Having a viable alternative that is open source and public-benefit is even better. OSDV is building a system that citizens can actually verify — a system we trust based on that ability to verify what is actually happening.

You can find out more about OSDV Foundation’s Trust the Vote project at trustthevote.org/background

let the games begin

2010-03-08T16:54:09Z

In other news, I am now a soccer mom! It's my own mother's fault, really; one of the things they do on their weekends together is kick a soccer ball around her front yard, and when she asked if he wanted to play on a team, his response was enthusiastically positive.

That was in late February. When I went to my community's website to see when their spring youth leagues were having registration, I discovered it was over in January. Who plans for spring sports in JANUARY???

I turned to my playgroup's online message board to vent, and one of the other mothers there told me she'd signed up her son to play in a Christian sports league. The practices were being held at a church just down the street from my own church, and registration was still open. So now we're all signed up to play in an environment where we'll probably both be happier than we would have been in the metro league.

They held their team evaluations yesterday. He did very well following instructions for the shooting and running drills, but during the dribbling drill, he kept reaching down to adjust the trajectory of his ball with his hands. My guess is that he'll get his hands kicked a few times before he breaks the habit.

BSD for Linux Users Audio now Available

2010-03-08T15:23:14Z

The audio for my SCALE 2010 talk on BSD for Linux Users is now available in mp3 format. The accompanying slides are in PDF format.

Fixing the Record Activity / re-firing up QA

2010-03-08T13:51:09Z

The Record Activity wasn’t working in our (testing) image of SoaS. Fortunately, Sebastian was in town and quickly showed Melanie how to fix it – it’s just a matter of updating to the latest RPM.

Switch to root.
Run “yum update –enablerepo=rawhide sugar-record” (no quotes)

That’s it.

On a separate note, now that Melanie has picked up on deployment support (I have very little to do with that at this point other than being around for general minionhood – Melanie’s my boss for that) I’m starting to (finally) turn my thoughts to testing/QA infrastructure. The Welly crew has been keeping the flame alive and I’ve got quite a bit to learn from them from the year I’ve been out of the OLPC/Sugar QA loop.

GSoC info session in Karlsruhe

2010-03-08T00:02:37Z

Since Google Summer of Code is coming up again very soon Sven, Phil and I will be doing a short info session at the University of Karlsruhe on Thursday at 4pm in room HS -101 in building 50.34 (Infobau). We’ll be giving a short intro to GSoC and tell a bit about how GSoC works in KDE and Debian and of course answer lots of questions. If you’re planning to apply this year you should definitely show up Please drop me a short email if you want to attend at lydia at kde org.

If you’re not in Karlsruhe or anywhere near there are info sessions in other cities around the world listed in the GSoC calendar.

Heading to SIGCSE 2010

2010-03-07T22:30:57Z

Tomorrow, Summer of Code opens for 2010. Going to be an action packed week; we're taking applications from mentoring organizations in less than 24 hours. Should be an exciting sixth year for the program.

Tuesday, I'm heading out to the city of Laverne & Shirley for SIGCSE 2010. It'll be my second trip to this conference for Computer Science educators, and I'm really looking forward to speaking at the Humanitarian FOSS Project Symposium on Wednesday. Hal Abelson will be keynoting at the Symposium, as well. It's a day not to be missed, so if you happen to be in and around Milwaukee, do stop by and attend the sessions.

I'll also be giving a presentation on Google's Open Source student programs with Cat Allman on Friday. She and I will be at Google's booth throughout the event, so if stop by and introduce yourself.

I'll be regularly updating identi.ca and Twitter while conferencing, so check for my updates from SIGCSE there. Time to go pack some very warm clothing.

Recipe: Crockpot Rouladen

2010-03-07T19:26:29Z

I never blog recipes. But while I was making rouladen today, I remembered when I first tried to make it, and discovered that the recipes on the web were all for something entirely different than the delicious rouladen my mom used to make. Mom got the recipe from a German babysitter named Betty who used to take care of me when I was little. It was fantastic and I haven't had anything else like it anywhere, so I asked Mom for the recipe, adapted it a little for my crockpot, and have been enjoying it ever since.

Apologies for the lack of precise quantities. This is how we do recipes in my family, and I'm not great at following precise instructions anyway, and in any case, the recipe originally came from Mom watching Betty make it once.

Crockpot Rouladen

Flank steak - lay it out flat.

Mustard - whatever kind you have lying around. Paint a thin layer onto steak. I personally hate mustard, but it doesn't taste like mustard in the final dish so it's okay.

Bacon - maybe 5 pieces. Cook to not-quite-crisp, to get rid of some of the fat. I cut off some of the fat too, but I'm weird that way. Lay strips on top of mustard.

Bread crumbs - Sprinkle on top of bacon. A little or a lot, as you wish. Enough to leak out when it's rolled, as it thickens the sauce nicely.

Roll steak up and secure with skewers or string. Watch the grain and roll it so that when you slice it, you'll be slicing across the grain. This will seem weird and wrong and you'll want to roll it up the other way because this way you'll end up with a long skinny thing that doesn't fit in the pot. It'll taste just as good either way, but it'll be a lot easier to eat if you roll it up the right way.

Brown steak a bit in small amount of oil, any kind ... maybe use a little of the bacon grease.

Onions, sliced - I don't like onions, so I leave them out.

Tomato sauce - one regular-sized can. Pour over steak. Add a little water too, up to about 1/3 can, if you want more sauce.

Salt, pepper, spices as desired. I add a little cinnamon, to make it taste more like Grecian Chicken (another tomato-sauce recipe where googling gets entirely the wrong result, and if I ever find it I'll be sure to blog it) or like the chicken tikka masala at Bollywood Cafe (which has no resemblance to tikka masala anywhere else, but is wonderful). I usually toss in a couple of bay leaves too, and whatever else I feel like adding that day.

Cook in the crockpot maybe 6.5 hours on high, longer on low. Also works fine simmering in a pan on the stove -- check it about 2.5 hours but expect it to take 3 or so. It doesn't hurt to baste occasionally, or add water if it starts to look dry (in the crockpot that usually isn't needed).

In the last hour or two, toss in:

Raisins - maybe a double handful (a couple small boxes).

When it's done, it should be falling-apart tender.

Serving: Cut small rounds, ladle sauce over them, and serve with noodles or bread.

Enjoy!

IWD2010 story competition — did you vote yet?

2010-03-07T08:42:15Z

Remember how I said that the voting for the International Women’s Day competition was open?

Well that statement only stays valid for about the next 16hrs or so.

There’s also a substantial number of people who’ve gone through, read all the stories and submitted their votes, but have not followed the instructions that were emailed to them. They really ought to do that. The token that is emailed out is how you validate your email address — votes are held in quarantine until this happens.

Drupal Camp Nashville

2010-03-06T17:21:09Z

Start:

2010-03-13 09:00 - 17:00 America/Chicago

Organizers:

kim-day

Regional conference

Calling all drupalchix planning on going to Drupal Camp Nashville http://drupalcampnashville.com/ next weekend (Saturday 3/13). I'd love to meet and maybe have a BOF at the camp just for drupalchix. Feel free to reply here or contact me if you're interested ... or just find me next weekend!

Drupalchix

Dream Time

2010-03-06T15:49:46Z

Dream last night: Other than the obligatory "why is Fog Creek having a meeting in my house?" scene, I mostly remember the time travel. I went back in time to some sort of "diamond rush" (like a gold rush, you see) and pretended to be a Russian woman who wanted her husband to take care of all this messy appraisal and trading. Nice to get some speaking practice in -- dreams count, right? I can barely believe my Russian convinced anyone, and upon waking, I had to wonder whether US residents 200 years ago would have believed a person with my skin color could be Russian. Fridge logic.

Within my dream, I read an amateurish webpage with tips for time tourists. "Read this Dave Barry piece about how annoying it is to carry a DiscMan when you're used to an iPod. Think ahead about how you'll deal with that," it advised. Right next to that, the author cautioned that you might alarm the natives by asking whether particular genocides have happened yet. "Don't ask, 'Have millions of people died recently?' or ask, 'Is such-and-so still alive? Is such-and-so still alive, too? What about such-and-so; is she still alive, too?'"

python is for girls

2010-03-05T19:53:19Z

Note to my readers: Its been some weeks since I blogged and had started this entry on 2010-02-19 21:43 (roughly two weeks) ago and I am less inclined to modify the older writing so its "as is" thought bits about my first pycon experience!! Thanks to Broadcomm bcm43x drivers which made me jump hoops and downgrade the kernel version, I was having wifi issues and could not blog or tweet much during pycon. Broadcomm, please be less evil.

I reached Atlanta after 4pm on thursday afternoon and Sylvia and me went straight to the Chicago room to volunteer for bag-stuffing and there I was rushing a guy ahead in line, little realising that it was CarlT who recognized me but I was so fixated on the task at hand that I didnt notice whom i was talking to. Yikes, assigning nicks to faces is not my strength!

Next, it was onto the swag T-Shirts and since Greg had just 2 PP templates we had only two teams taking a go at it. Sylvia, me and Wei (and later various volunteers) had a simple humanized-robo process to maximize folded shirts output per minute. This drew tons of pycon gawkers and many onlookers wanted to pitch in and have a go at folding t-shirts. Greg's wife and daughter came to watch too. Our efforts were rewarded with yummy pizzas (yeah they had vegan pizza too) and drinks. It was a lot of fun for my first day and its really heart-warming to see icons who should be UP there, stand and work with you. The simplicity and lack of pride is endearing.

Friday, (the first day of) the conference, was kicked off by Van Lindberg and Steve Holden introducing the PSF and its objectives and stressing on the PSF's focus on diversity. This was echoed by GvR who started off his keynote for Pycon2010 wearing a t-shirt that had the python logo and "python is for girls", sent to him at Google by an anonymous person. Hmm...I am curious to know who is the $AnonPerson@Google !!

GvR is one speaker that I enjoyed listening to, for the casual twitter-feed keynote and yet informative speaking style sans slides. And no, GvR didnt wax eloquent on the "state of CPython" although that was what was listed on the guide. For someone of his stature, the lack of vanity in his community interactions is endearing and if you are not already a part of this space, you'd be inspired to want to chip in and do something. Another noteworthy aspect, the organizers make no bones about pycon being a commercial event. Unlike "some" private and commercial Indian events, there is no BS about claiming to be a "floss" event with shady financial(s) that are not privy to the community that makes the event, and neither is there a cabal that controls and pulls strings from behind the scenes. Their honest and transparent process is admirable, akin to other community conferences.

A round of snacks later it was over to many luminary speakers from the Python community and the first talk I attended was "The Mighty Dictionary" by Brandon Craig Rhodes and then I attended, Managing the world's oldest Django project by James Bennett who explained why it was such a bad idea to have different branches for each of your clients which will lead to an unwieldy and incompatible codebase over a period of time. Deployment headaches with each server-client network running its own software instance. Their solution was "hosted service". He spoke about unit testing, its importance and how they used spidering tools to test sites for all hosted apps. Saying "No" to customizations and instead creating re-usable customized apps from some requests. IIRC, his parting shot was "FLOSS, Internal code becomes external dependency. Floss jettisons legacy code."

The vegan lunch was fabulous but more about the post-lunch sessions. They were, Python 3: The Next Generation by Mr. Wesley j. chun ; Maximize your program's laziness by Dr. David Q Mertz ; The Ring of Python - Holger Krekel. The latter was a talk I simply loved so go and watch the videos which are online and linked via the pycon website. This is another aspect of pycon that I love --Sharing videos with those that could not attend pycon. They dont assume the worst about people, as in, people will not attend the event if talks are made available online (and hence the organizers wont make money when attendance drops), not including other arrogant (if not) silly excuses that I have heard from certain Indian events.

In 2010, attendance topped previous pycon's. It was announced that this year diversity was at its peak with 113.3 women attendees. No, I am not sure how 0.3% women attended pycon :). Danny blogged and Guido tweeted, and wrote to the list endorsing his support and thoughts on "diversity, people representing other countries and minority groups". I did make it a point to thank him and all the PSF member/organizers that I could remember for the PSF sponsorship, enabling me to attend. GloriaW deserves a special mention and a BIG thankyou for handling hyatt reservations for a bunch of women who were room sharing.

I also met Noufal and Satya (who was our room-share partner), who were also sponsored by the PSF this year. Satya was telling us about her horrid experience with the legendary US B1-visa process in India and the running around she had to endure. Hmmm, why am i not surprised at the horrid experience she had?! It was incredibly funny to hear that the officer asked her to speak in python....doh!! My immigration officer was a hulk at 6'4" and the only intimidating question he asked me was "So, is python like C language?" and before I could speak he cuts in with "Never mind, I'd never understand what you'd say. You are good to go."

LOL, more later.

When Bad OEM Software Happens to Good Slide/Negative Scanner Hardware

2010-03-05T01:30:03Z

I like the Plustek OpticFilm 7600i SE scanner. Just wish the software had a better UI.

Cat lift

2010-03-04T20:53:39Z

The entire ensemble is operated by the cat, via sensors:

I am sure Grabbity and Mewton would love one of these!

Geek Feminism: "The biggest enemy of hackerspaces"

2010-03-04T20:53:35Z

New post to Geek Feminism, in which I try to get people talking based upon this link that bokunenjin pointed out:

"The biggest enemy of hackerspaces"

I think commenter Meg nailed the more interesting problem on the head by saying that the real question is how to adapt the hackerspace model so that it's useful to a wider range of people, including those who may have not as much time. It seems like dreamwidth has done a pretty interesting job of making the open source model more attractive to more folk, and I'd love to see this done for other geek pursuits...

I'm trying to imagine drop-in fees for hackerspaces. Perhaps do it like the yoga studio I used to attend, where rather than paying for x months, you pay for x classes (or x days at the hacklab). Or playgroups for adults with kids (although I suppose some of the things around hackerspaces are dangerous, it might be possible to make a play area and have parents take turns watching the kids). Or... Hm. I'm curious as to what people already do. Perhaps another post will have to follow later.

square eyes

2010-03-04T10:09:37Z

I've been getting a lot of eye-strain headaches lately, which have really been ruining my productivity, so I figured that it was probably a good idea to go for an eye test.

There's always that bit when they're taking your history and the Optometrist asks "so what work do you do, Danielle?" and that knowing look you get when you reply "I'm a software engineer". Yeah, you're screwed.

Sometimes I'm surprised there's not some long running class-action against IBM for apparently inventing the device that has ruined the eyesight of two generations of men and women. Like the tobacco companies of the information technology sector. [Sarcasm.]

The end result is that my eyes definitely have gotten worse. I think the Optometrist said they were now at the point it would need to be marked on my driver's license, except VicRoads already pinged me for that when I moved to Victoria and needed my glasses to pass their eyetest. Oh, and thanks to a machine that looks like it's straight out of a Roger Moore-era Bond film, apparently my headaches have certainly been eye-strain related.

Homeless

2010-03-04T00:57:09Z

Last week I packed all of my belongings in a storage unit and left my house of 10 years. I've been paring down my possessions so that when I left I could comfortably fit all that remained in a 5x5 ft (1.5m) unit. I stuffed all of my clothes, a few important books, and electrical gadgets in a duffel bag and carry-on. That is what I will live out of for the foreseeable future. I've chosen to roam and I don't know when or where I'll stop. I have some preliminary plans to stay in Europe for most of the next eight months or so, but who knows where I'll be when. I'm in Dublin, Ireland right now, will be at DrupalCon San Francisco in April and intend to live in Copenhagen, Denmark this summer. That's about all I have sketched out.

The last year has been intense in a lot of different ways. I've also been in a deep depression for most of it. No need to get into lots of details, but one of the casualties of all this was my relationship with Colleen. It ended in October, after nine years together. Needless to say, we are both deeply saddened, but determined to work out a lasting friendship. I stayed in the empty house for as long as I could while we figured out what to do with it. Neither of us has any desire to stay in the shell that used to be our home. Aside from the ghostly experience of living in the house, Maryland itself doesn't have much to offer me these days. Most of my good friends from the area have moved away. The house is a quiet place of trees and memories, which I do love, but it also makes me feel cut off, adrift. And sad. Maryland is simply no longer a home for me, and returning there makes me feel empty instead of comforted. More has changed here than my relationship in just the last few months (not counting all of the shit from last year); the deeply wooded lot next to me has been ripped up (every single last ever-loving tree!) for new houses, my cats moved out to live with Colleen, and my elderly next-door neighbor killed himself on his front steps (that image is forever burned in my skull). The time has come to move on. I feel like I am living in a parody of my "home." It has been a good home, a great home, but my definition of home is changing. Or maybe my definition is the same but there is nothing that matches it any longer. What it is changing into or from, I don't know, but I know "home" is no longer here.

So I'm heading back into the world of experience and exploration to see what I can find. I'm not even sure what I'm looking for, but I will try (try, try) to have faith in my self that I will know something when I encounter it. That I won't continue to make fatal mistakes (ha!). I will need to work hard to be open on this journey. I'm beat up, fed up, exhausted, and oftentimes not very amused by all of this muckity-muck when I had a perfectly respectable life going on. But there is also a flame in me that is fascinated and pulls me forward in hope, gasping at fresh air. There is excitement mixed with fear and (self-)loathing. I choose to believe this is a cocktail for discovery and growth instead of despair.

So. I am homeward bound but homeless. And I'm OK with that. Let the journey unfold.

The Statute of Anne (was actually kinda revolutinary)

2010-03-03T11:17:46Z

Last night, in two different instances I read the claim that the England’s first copyright act, the statute of Anne passed in 1710 was never intended to protect authors but to protect the reproducers like printing houses and presses investing in authors implying that printing houses loved the act.

After pouring through hundreds of pages of Adrian John’s history of piracy, that statement is pretty off and in fact I don’t think the Statute was really about printers/booksellers or authors but the public.

While licensing had all together lapsed for a period before this statute was passed, and the printing houses and book sellers were indeed clamoring loudly for an official recognition of property in literary works, they wanted a perpetuall right in literary property rooted in common and natural law. Like I am talking here about forever, not like a measly, paltry 14 years.

They were not exactly thrilled at this statute (in fact, they were downright pissssssssed off) for it severely limited how long they held a property right over books. In fact, so pissed were they, they challenged the statute, went to court in 1769 (Millar v Taylor) and got what they wanted: a perpetual right to literary work.

It took s a fiery Scot and bookseller by the name of Alexander Donaldson (I kind of think of him as the RMS of booksellers; he was quite a rabble rouser) to challenge Millar and he finally got his day in the highest court of the land in 1774 in Donaldson v Beckett and the outcome was that a perpetual right in books was tossed out the window. The court ruled that copyright was a limited statute. One of the lords in the case even stated “”Knowledge has no value or use for the solitary owner: to be enjoyed it must be communicated.” Adrian John’s explains the significance of this case in the following way:

““Copyright, they decided, was not a right of man at all. Indeed, it was almost the very opposite: an artifact, and one that replaced a prior right established by an author’s work of creation. . . In terms of revolution principles, liberty won out over property”

Again the printers booksellers (minus the “pirate” ones) were not happy a bunch. Unfortunately the subsequent history is one we all know well, one in which booksellers and others with vested interests in copyrights pushed to extend property rights in all sorts of ways to get to where we are today (obviously with a lot of different historical developments), a land, time, period where perpetuity may not be forever but it is long enough to nullify the very public domain envisioned by the first copyright act.

However, I think it is nonetheless important to recognize how radical in many respects the first copyright act was: given what the book printers and sellers wanted (and they were a powerful bunch).

For those interested in learning more about Alexander Donaldson, I would check out his Some Thoughts on the State of Literary Property, where he rails against the London booksellers for being monopolistic and calling for a limited property right in books.

You’re doing it wrong!

2010-03-03T08:05:05Z

“You’re doing it wrong.” I believe is one of the most counterproductive statements a person can make.

First of all – that statement gets little accomplished. Typically it makes the person that is “doing it wrong” dig deeper to defend their work. Why – well they are WORKING CREATING ACCOMPLISHING. Something is vested and so therefore I must defend that time and effort on my part that I have vested. It is a natural and some what justifiable human response.

And it be honest, “You’re doing it wrong” is typically an inaccurate statement. Instead it should be “I think that you are not creating what I think I want.” Or perhaps instead “you are not doing what I would do.” And sometimes “you are not doing what 99% of the rest of the world would do.” That doesn’t actually make it wrong… I mean Feynman talks about science being that constant challenging of norms and experimentation. When is something actually 100% wrong?

I strive in life to be the person that helps people figure out that instead of them both fighting over the orange. One person wants the peel while the other needs the juice.

So I am working on this citability codeathon. It is interesting to me that many view me as dictating a standard that is incompatible with whatever they are doing and therefore my project must be competition. This reminds me when I was at the National NonProfit Congress and I had to facilitate a discussion between two Nonprofits that were angry that the other was “stealing their poor people.” I view this as losing sight of the cause or the reason we do what we do.

Our mutual goal is to make data citable and therefore more accessible to the people. There are many paths there.

For the codeathon, I have several groups that will be attending. At first glance, it might seem we are at odds. For example everyone assumes that Joe Carmel’s Legislink.org must conflict w Citability. He and I talked for several hours. They don’t. Actually citability may make his job easier. We both know we could never get all the govt sites to adopt citability and that makes his tool quite necessary.

Also the Coins and URN:LEX crowd, those datamarkup standards can easily be added to the citability markups. URN:LEX isn’t for everyone since it must be created and maintained by a governmental body but there is no reason why we can’t add a special parser to citability to add those fields when they are available. Same with the semantic web. Citability only requires 3 things: A unique location, datestimestamp and granularity. There is so much more to be added. When it was created, we KNEW it wasn’t perfect.

I suppose when you start a project from a point of view where you know what you are doing is not the complete answer, it makes it easier to see adaptive solutions.

I consider what we are doing with citability to be a baby step. I don’t consider it to be right and other ways wrong. I typically find that if we can sit down and talk there are easily ways to make things interoperable. I believe that citability is right for a small part of what we are trying to accomplish. I don’t think it is perfect. Far from it. I think eventually we will have some fascinating structures to build folksonomies, taxonomies and ontologies on top of this esp where we can specialize for different documents etc.

I know that Tim Berners-Lee is doing a huge project in the UK with Linkeddata. I think that is awesome. But I’m not sure about that project being available for the City of Austin anytime soon. I am working within some very limited constraints. I really want him to succeed. It would make many things easier if he does. But this doesn’t mean I stop doing what I am trying to do. It doesn’t mean our way of doing things is wrong. Life is evolution. We use HTML 5 and XML now

But for now, I am trying to do what I believe is right for now. Doesn’t mean I think what you are doing is wrong. Just maybe wrong for me. But there are so few of us creating in this space… I find it sad to argue over someone stealing their poor people… Instead, let’s talk and see if maybe you just want juice while I am eying that orange peel. And yes you are INVITED to the codeathon to work on your project as well just make sure it is Open Source

Adventures in Fried Rice

2010-03-03T00:25:21Z

The short version:
- Cook some rice the day before you're going to make fried rice. It really does work better; warm, the rice tends to break down and turn to mush.
- Take vegables, chop into small pieces. [Technically they should be uniform small pieces but we're not all rapier1 :-P.]
- Optionally, do the same with meat. Marinate first if you like.
- Optionally, scramble an egg or make a very thin omelet & cut it into strips.
- Cook the above seperately or in small groups.
- If you want sauce/flavoring, add it to the meat ond/or vegables
- FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS TASTY DO NOT put more than a few dashes of soy sauce, IF ANY, on the rice or the finished product.
- Once your vegs or meat & vegs are cooked, stir fry the rice, add the rest, toss, PIG OUT.

Yesterday I cooked up 2 cups (dried) of brown rice with the intent of making some fried rice.

Many years ago when I was a poor college student living in the depths of the Oakland section of Pittsburgh I lived a block away from a tiny food coop. It was great because you could go in and buy, like, 3 mushrooms, an egg and a couple of stalks of green onions for a dollar or two. I'd take that home and cook it up and add it to some rice. Simple and filling.

Today I was far, far more adventurous. First up, the chicken & the mushrooms. I forgot to take some of the frozen chicken¹ out to thaw, so this was my chance to thaw & cook the chicken and rehydrate the dried shiitaki at the same time. I put the chicken in a frying pan with some broken-up mushrooms and about 3 cups of water mixed with half a packet of flavoring from the "good" (nong shim) ramen packets & simmered it for a bit.

While it was going I spent time chopping vegetables that were not yet chopped³, in bursts, as my hands have been very bad lately.

Once everything else was in zipper-lock bags⁴ I moved over to the stove, with some bowls (both small & large), to start things up.

The chicken & the mushrooms were dumped, with the liquid, into one of the large bowls.

Frying pan was wiped, most of this was done on a medium high heat.

Next, the onion. I had a red onion, 2-3 handfuls went in to some hot oil in the frying pan. I really dislike biting into huge chunks of onion so these pieces were chopped relatively finely.

While those were starting to cook I started shredding the chicken, pulling it into small pieces, which went into a smaller bowl. Once that was done I tossed it with some dark soy sauce (the stuff with mole-asses in it) and oyster sauce. Then as time permitted between the next few vegables, I further chopped the mushroom pieces and added them to that same bowl.

Once the onion was starting to brown (you might prefer it less cooked) I tossed in half a chopped orange capsicum (bell pepper)⁵ and some chopped celery and took to stirring that up. When that was heated yet still crispy, into a big bowl. A couple of shakes of dark soy sauce and black vinegar went in, too.

Next up: the last of the gai lan. Chinese broccoli tastes closer to spinach than western broccoli, but has a mix of leaves and thick stalks. That went into a pan of a little hot oil, and after a minute, also got some of the chicken-mushroom-cooking liquid, enough to coat the bottom of the pan. This let the it steam more than fry. By the time the liquid had evaporated the gai lan was heated, vividly green and the stalk pieces still crisp with the right give. This went into the big bowl with the onion-capsicum-celery mix.

Egg: Really, egg-in-a-carton. About 2-3 eggs worth went into the frying pan, along with a little bit of (regular) soy sauce. There are usually two methods to this madness. One is to just pretend it's scrambled egg, the other is to make a thin omelet and then slice it up. I went for the former, then threw it into the bowl-O-vegables.

Now it all went together. Wiped the pan, added a little oil, reheated at a heat a little higher than before In went half the cooked rice - If I'd been using a wok, I realized belatedly, I could have done it all at once, but at the time I was only going to make half a batch. Ha. Anyways, the rice got stirred around until the grains started to separate. Then the chicken and mushrooms went in. Then, here's where I failed -- the whole thing of vegables went in. Turns out I'd made WAY more than what was needed for one batch.⁶

I wound up dumping that into one of the big bowls, "frying" the rest of the rice, then putting some of the big mix in, then mixing it all together in the big bowl [it wouldn't fit in my frying pan].

Let me repeat what I said above: FOR THE LOVE OF TASTE PLEASE! Do not add craploads of soy sauce to the rice or to the finished rice. It's like making a steak and coating it with so much steak sauce all you're tasting is the sauce. Sauce your meats & vegables, but don't make soup, and drain them if needed before it gets added to the rice (or it will get mushy). If you've done this right, you have a mix of flavorful ingredients and rice, and the flavors all mix together for yum.

[You may, however, add a dash of sriracha, if you're like me and it goes in everything but the coffee.]

Thus ends my tale of BUUUUUUUURP (excuse me⁷) my fried rice adventure.

------
¹And then I find #4 screw up from my last food chopping trip. 1st I found that the "shrimp & pork" dumplings I bought at the Chinese grocer was really "fish and pork" wontons (with soup base!). Then I discovered that the "pork & vegetable" dumplings I bought there were really "pork and cilantro"². THEN I found that the tuna cans I bought were tuna in oil. Today I found that the frozen chicken boobs are really frozen chicken boob tenders. And, yes, I shopped from a list!

²I'm one of those weirdos for who(m) cilantro tastes like soap. So I had two meals of tasty (blech) soap dumplings.

³It's not uncommon for me to decide I want some vegable I have fresh, chop it all, use some of it, and store the rest in the fridge or freezer.

⁴Dang I love zipper-lock baggies, but the dang zipper thing keeps coming off. I've gotten really good at putting the damn things back on.

⁵I find green capsicums too bitter and they upset my stomach [my dad was allergic to them, hmm], but I find that the deeper colored ones are sweeter and less upsetting. Purple ones are the most awesome but are of course absurdly expensive. I lucked into the orange one on sale.

⁶This is a common problem for me when I'm cooking on the fly. I always think I don't have enough of something and toss more in. End result: TONS OF FOOD.

⁷ Long live Stumpus Maximus!

How to Learn Embedded Linux (For Free Again)

2010-03-02T19:48:41Z

In the past few years, the use of Linux in embedded devices has skyrocketed. Televisions, phones, cars, ATMs: you name it, it probably has Linux running in it. At the recent Mobile World Congress, Linux dominated virtually every product announcement: Samsung’s Bada, many new Android phones, the Linux Foundation’s MeeGo project, Palm, and many more. Embedded Linux today has been nearly as disruptive as Linux was in the data center in the 90s and 2000s as it displaced proprietary Unix OSes.

With massive growth comes the need for skilled developer talent. As many of you know, the Linux Foundation launched Linux training courses for developer and sys admins last year, and has been steadily expanding its offerings. This January we announced a free webinar series to help connect developers to the experts they need to advance their careers. Based on the demand we’re seeing in light of these recent announcements, we are announcing a new free training webinar on embedded Linux.

In this free webinar, you will receive the basics of embedded Linux development and get an overview of best practices. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about a very hot area in technology. I hope you take advantage of it and find it useful for your career.

We also have a five day course on embedded Linux development for those ready to dive in on March 22 in the Bay Area. There are a few spots left so please register if interested. Those who attend the free webinar will receive a discount for the course.

Charline’s Icon Usability Study

2010-03-02T19:48:13Z

On Friday at the GNOME London UX Hackfest, Charline from Canonical gave us some details on an icon usability study she had run recently for the Launchpad icon set. Here’s my notes from the session:

Methodology

The study was done as a surveymonkey.com survey.
The study was for Launchpad, so a link to the survey was posted to Launchpad’s blog to attract Launchpad users. After 3 days, the survey had gathered 125 respondents.
The icons were presented in context, since the context would inform the user’s interpretation of the icon in real usage
Then users were asked to help interpret what each icon meant
- First question: “this icon means….” and asked the user to fill out, free-form
- Second question: “i have the following percentage of confidence in my answer” so we can tell how much of a guess it was on the user’s part or how sure they were of their interpretation.
- Third: “when do you expect to find this icon?”
Then, users were asked to provide a second / alternate interpretation of the icon, filling out the same three fields for it: this icon means… percentage certainty/confidence…. where do you expect to find

Lessons Learned

You can’t do more than 5 or 6 icons per survey. It’s too much work for the respondents… the rate of people who don’t complete the survey grows high if you ask too much of them.
After only 3 days, the survey had 125 respondents – a very fast response rate! Posting to a blog that users follow was an effective way to get respondents in this case.
We can start to understand how people read icons and see some design rules and guidelines if you analyze enough icon interpretations. For example, with the edit icon, most users realized that it meant edit, but they also gave it a strong association with attention / warning / danger. Very different meanings…. a recommendation would be to change the color or shape so it wasn’t yellow and didn’t have an ‘!’-like design in it.

Filed under: GNOME, GNOME UX Hackfest

London

2010-03-02T02:55:15Z

Londoners or those that know the city well: if you had to pick your favorite thing to do in London (in March) what would that be? I have 1.5 days there of mostly free time and would love to gather some intel.

from the department of things I didn't know: bitters

2010-02-28T11:04:37Z

This is something I did not know. The bitters used in lemon, lime and bitters are infact 45% alcohol by volume. Admittedly, you only add a dash to the drink, so there is practically no alcohol, but still some (if that's important to you for whatever reason).

Hat-tip to Lisa.

~

Saw Rosie Burgess Trio this afternoon with Steph and Jo. Claims of it being at the bowling club were a lie, as it was actually at the RSL across the footy oval. We walked around the clearly shut bowling club a bit first before trying the RSL out of desperation (she had posted to Facebook reminding people of the gig). The RSL looked really quiet too, but we noticed a tiny billing stuck to the notice board and eventually found it out the back. Hooray.

They played a double set to about 15 people (everyone else probably gave up after wandering around the bowls club?). They're playing in Collingwood in 4 weeks at the Bendigo Hotel. Why yes, I do believe we've become those fans.

Today's Piss People Off Ranting

2010-02-28T09:32:56Z

People who are going to get smacked by me include:

- People who think that climate changes can't be real because of the snow storms and unusual weather in some places. [Whether there is "global warming", go learn about statistics and average]

- People who think {insert-diety-of-choice} is causing the snow, the quakes in Chile & Haiti, etc. I believe in God but I refuse to believe in a God that either micromanages people's lives or casually kills thousands because of a pissy mood about whatever we're doing on this planet.

- People who think the US government should never "get into" the health care business, implying that they've never been "in" the health care business in the first place.

- People who think that any sort of government run or managed health care system available to everyone in the US is really going to fix the health care gaps that exist now. See the above business they're currently screwing up.

- People who think the Welfare systems can be successfully replaced by private charities. Do you even understand where they came from in the first place? They came from a ECONOMIC DEPRESSION in which the private charities were folding because of lack of donations and those that kept going weren't able to keep up with the demand. Gee, let's see, what's our economy like right now... and what's the demand for relief like?

- People who insist that Bush acted alone to leave the legacy of economic mess, among other things, as if he was King of the US.

- People who are screaming for the removal of Obama because he hasn't fixed the economy or stopped the wars in a year. Go learn basic economics. Go look at what happened in Vietnam at the end of that 'offensive'.

- People who think the next nitwit will be any better than the last pile.

- People who insist that their tax money shouldn't be spent on {FILL IN BLANK}. These are the usually people who bitch about how much money is spent on defense spending and then turn around & whine about how our country isn't protected when bad things happen. These are often the people who complain about speed limits and scream for justice when accidents happen. These are commonly the people who want their local tax rates cut so that police & fire units lose funding and the roads have giant potholes, then scream bloody murder when their house is broken into, catches fire, or their car is damaged by the roads.

- Related: People who don't want their tax money paying for health care for the poor. If I go to the hospital right now, who do you think is paying my bill? The hospital? No, it's coming out of YOUR POCKET. From tax support, from hospital bills, from insurance payments. YOU.

- People who generally refuse to learn about or from history, often because the facts do or might conflict with other beliefs.

Did I mention I recently took one of those "Where's your political bent" quizzes? I came up with right-leaning libertarian. PONDER THAT.

MORE WHEN THE ANGER SUBSIDES, if there's any skin left on my hand.

numbercrunching 10%, 23%?

2010-02-27T12:05:09Z

We list on our Drupalchix page description that we have make up of 10% women, compared to Propietary/commercial software is 25% and Opensource at 1.5% from the audio file at DrupalCamp LA. Also good notes from OSCon presentation on Kirrily Robert's blog.

In DrupalCampLA they listed the make up "somewhere around 14-20%", yet only a small percentage of those women actively participate in the meet-ups, camps, code-sprints and other Drupal activities.
http://2009.drupalcampla.com/drupalchix

How are we generating these statistics? Is this attendance at Drupal events? DrupalCamp? Committers? Organisers?

I've been involved in organising two DrupalCamps in Ireland and I've never been asked to hand over any gender info. It wouldn't be too hard to gather this information from organizers.

How did we come up with the 10% and how did DrupalCampLA come up with 14-23%?

Drupalchix

Russian Tech Delegation — Overview

2010-02-26T20:45:10Z

Last week I participated in a government sponsored delegation to Russia called the “U.S.-Russia Innovation Dialogue” This delegation was organized by the U.S. government, in cooperation with the Russian government, as part of the Presidents’ Bilateral Commission (“Presidents” means President Medvedev of the Russian Federation and President Obama of the US). The goal was to improve the ways of working together in areas with shared interests, while not ignoring areas of disagreement. One area of shared interests that has been identified in innovation, and thus the delegation.

The delegation was co-led by Howard Solomon from the National Security Council and by Jared Cohen from the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. The delegation included John Donohoe, CEO of eBay, Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco, Esther Dyson of EDventure, Jason Liebman of Howcast, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, Shervin Pishevar, founder of Social Gaming Network, Ashton Kutcher, CEO of Katalyst, Ellis Rubinstein, President of the New York Academy of Sciences, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer and me. We met with all sorts of people — federal and regional officials, civil society actors, educators, students, and entrepreneurs. Our focus was the role technology can play in social development.

One explicit goal of the delegation was to do more than talk, to figure out concrete steps that can be taken. We ended up with a set of items where we see possibilities for immediate collaboration. It’s a pretty meaty list, laid out in 6 themes. There are versions available in English and Russian as well as a summary in The Moscow Times.

Сняг

2010-02-26T03:53:56Z

Над тези стръмни стрехи от железо
и тези булеварди от асфалт
поне един път няма ли да слезе
снегът от небесата като бял
и лъчезарен ангел? Аз не вервам.

Във този черен като въглен град
ще бъде зимата наверно черна,
незнайни - ангелите и снегът.
И ако дойде накога, без жал
жестоки ще го стъпкат със обувките си
стражарите и проститутките,
ще му почернят белите пера
димът на гарите и на комините...

Бял сняг ще има само във градините,
където са играели деца.

— Атанас Далчев

help fund women's travel to Libre Planet

2010-02-25T20:13:56Z

At the FSF's Libre Planet conference this year in March, there will be a track focusing on increasing the participation of women in free software.

If you are able and support this cause, consider donating to fund additional women's travel to this event. Being able to meet in person with other people like you is such an energizing opportunity. Give this gift to someone who wouldn't otherwise be able to make it!

PHPWomen Partnership Program

2010-02-25T18:41:03Z

Yesterday, I was very excited to announce that PHPWomen will be partnering with Open Source projects who foster open, friendly and respectful communities. We work with project leaders for these projects to identify specific areas where they can use the most help, then we, in turn, promote these opportunities to PHPWomen members. The result is that we get more women involved in contributing to open source, open source projects get the help they desperately need, and everybody goes home happy.

It's interesting to note that while we ask that a project provide a Statement of Diversity, or other similar language somewhere on the site, this is not always easy to do. I understand some hesitation in putting this idea in writing, and if a project leader instead can assure me that our members won't be harassed by a bunch of assholes, then I'm okay with that. By linking the PHPWomen name with your project, we're putting faith in the fact that you will treat everyone (male and female) with respect and as a valued member of the community.

I've been asked by more than one person why a Statement of Diversity is needed, when that should be the default. It should be obvious that everyone is respectful and treats all others equally. My answer to that is yes, it *should be obvious*. But it's not. Consider this. If you take the time to dedicate a page of your site, or even write up language that suggests your community embraces diversity, is open, friendly, and doesn't tolerate disrespect or discrimination based on anything, then that tells me that this is a priority for you. It sets the tone for your community. It clearly identifies your stance on the matter. If I come to your site, and I don't see anything anywhere that mentions how you treat newcomers, then for me to assume you're going to welcome me and my contributions with open arms ... well that's a big assumption to make. So while we don't require it, we do appreciate those that take the time to clarify the culture of their communities.

We already have 6 projects that have partnered with us, and are in discussions with numerous others. We are proud to partner with these awesome projects, and you can read more about them or see what specific opportunities they have:

If you are the project leader of an awesome Open Source project, and you'd like to be included on our list, by all means give me a shout at Elizabeth.at.Naramore.dot.net. And if you have considered contributing to open source, but you aren't sure where to start, then check out the wonderful opportunities that are out there!

HTML5 Media and Accessibility presentation

2010-02-23T03:45:50Z

Today, I was invited to give a talk at my old workplace CSIRO about the HTML5 media elements and accessibility.

A lot of the things that have gone into Ogg and that are now being worked on in the W3C in different working groups – including the Media Fragments and HTML5 WGs – were also of concern in the Annodex project that I worked on while at CSIRO. So I was rather excited to be able to report back about the current status in HTML5 and where we’re at with accessibility features.

Check out the presentation here. It contains a good collection of links to exciting demos of what is possible with the new HTML5 media elements when combined with other HTML features.

I tried something now with this presentation: I wrote it in a tool called S5, which makes use only of HTML features for the presentation. It was quite a bit slower than I expected, e.g. reloading a page always included having to navigate to that page. Also, it’s not easily possible to do drawings, unless you are willing to code them all up in HTML. But otherwise I have found it very useful for, in particular, including all the used URLs and video element demos directly in the slides. I was inspired with using this tool by Chris Double’s slides from LCA about implementing HTML 5 video in Firefox.

Walking & Swimming

2010-02-23T00:42:15Z

I went for a swim today! And yesterday too - And I've been walking daily for over a week. It feels good. It's been too long.

I've also cut out sugar in my coffee.

I've become obese in recent years and it just feels awful. It's never been about body image for me. Thank goodness! I've seen the heartbreaking consequences of that kind of thinking. But I do really enjoy having energy, and I've been lacking that for a long time now. I put it down to spending too much energy just carrying too much bulk.

I don't have a goal weight I'm trying to get to - so I'll have to come up with some other motivational mind tricks. At the moment though - the main motivating force is my best buddy Adam and a GPS. We're walking together and tracking our progress online with the aid of technology - as geeky fanatics from way back, this seems to be doing the trick quite nicely.

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